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Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

chicagotribune.com

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Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#101

Post by blahedo »

pessimizer wrote: post #90
jeremymims wrote: post #84

It's easy to come down against Yelp, but small businesses have been trying to "game" Yelp in unsophisticated ways for some time. We work with a lot of small businesses and I've had conversations with a statistically significant number of them who have admitted trying to flood Yelp with reviews they've written themselves, writing reviews under fake named accounts, and providing over-glowing text for reviews to be subm…

Agreed. If there was one terrible review written a year or two ago by someone with a reviewing history, and then suddenly twenty gushing all caps reviews filled with superlatives and exclamations of personal affection by reviewers with no other review history, all posted within the same week, I'd be upset if yelp didn't filter them out. If some business tells all of their best customers to post a review on Yelp, a si…

All true, but note that the "other 18" in this case are not all posted in the same week, with all caps etc. Several are in the same week, but others are spread over multiple years and are not overly gushy, all-caps-y, or anything else (although it's possible they were one-time posters). Reading through the filtered posts, my thought was that if these were the work of someone gaming the system, that person is A LOT more subtle and meta than one would normally expect. More likely is that the majority of them are totally legit.

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#102

Post by akashs »

jeremymims wrote: post #84

It's easy to come down against Yelp, but small businesses have been trying to "game" Yelp in unsophisticated ways for some time. We work with a lot of small businesses and I've had conversations with a statistically significant number of them who have admitted trying to flood Yelp with reviews they've written themselves, writing reviews under fake named accounts, and providing over-glowing text for reviews to be subm…

TL;DR: You're wrong. And you sound like someone from Yelp trying to "game the system" and write positive reviews about yourself. Maybe PG's algorithms should censor you without any evidence?

--------------

My parents had the exact same experience as in the article.

- A few years ago, they didn't really know what yelp was, but a customer was surprised that the reviews up there were pretty bad, mostly just from customers who were upset we had to send them letters after they didn't pay their bills.

- We encouraged people to review the business on Yelp. Despite numerous people (including a couple Yelp Elites) writing positive real reviews, interestingly, none of the reviews showed up on Yelp.

- Customers told us their reviews had not shown up, and when we called Yelp to find out why, a few reps either claimed there was no way to put the reviews back or they denied their existence. The one thing they did have in common was they promised things would be "fixed" if we advertised with them. I'm pretty sure that's closer to extortion than smart business.

- Last week, my dad finally caved and placed some ads on Yelp.

- Within an hour, there were suddenly dozens of additional reviews on there for the business, and the rating had shot up from 2 stars to 4.5 stars.

So let me ask you, if Yelp really thought those hidden reviews were trying to game the system, why were those reviews placed back when we agreed to spend some ad money? Yelp can't argue that their reviews are unbiased when stuff like this happens.

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#104

Post by blahedo »

veyron wrote: post #98
noduerme wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends if you live in the US or the UK, when it comes to libel.

Can you explain how libel differs between the US and the UK?

Here, http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=libel+differences+us+uk

(the top link is a pretty good one)

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#106

Post by yoda_sl »

akashs wrote: post #102
jeremymims wrote: post #84

It's easy to come down against Yelp, but small businesses have been trying to "game" Yelp in unsophisticated ways for some time. We work with a lot of small businesses and I've had conversations with a statistically significant number of them who have admitted trying to flood Yelp with reviews they've written themselves, writing reviews under fake named accounts, and providing over-glowing text for reviews to be subm…

TL;DR: You're wrong. And you sound like someone from Yelp trying to "game the system" and write positive reviews about yourself. Maybe PG's algorithms should censor you without any evidence? -------------- My parents had the exact same experience as in the article. - A few years ago, they didn't really know what yelp was, but a customer was surprised that the reviews up there were pretty bad, mostly just from custome…

That doesn't surprise me. Depending on the business, Yelp is powerful and you may have to play by their rule. See my previous post earlier, at least my wife small business is not too dependent on Yelp because customers are signing for classes spread over 10 to 12 weeks.

But it's terrible to see the effect of purchasing Yelp ads change Yelp system so much!

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#107

Post by pigbucket »

Retric wrote: post #80
pbz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Yelp does is a racket, similar to what BBB does. In Yelp's case they are being helped by Google and other search engines. The problem is that when people link to them that's an upvote in Google's eyes. After enough upvotes are gained, provided they don't spam, there's little anybody can do to downvote them. It's not like you can negatively link to them. This, I feel, is one of the main problems with the like and…

I suspect Yelp is extremely venerable and could be successfully sued from several angles. However, the court system tends to protect such companies on free speech grounds etc. So, their downfall will probably come from leaked internal operations rather than any external source.

A beautiful typo. You mean "vulnerable" for "venerable" right? Is that because you think they really are doing what the article implies? Is there evidence more substantial than that offered by the Tribune? The article for me is just shoddy journalism. Can it be that hard to really test the hypothesis that businesses that turn down the ad salesperson get screwed by Yelp? I don't want to defend Yelp since I don't like the site, but I think its pretty scummy of the Tribune also to willingly promulgate, at least by rhetorical implication, the idea that Justin G is some kind of shill for non-Brader dog trainers.

(Very much tangential at this point, so I'll put my theory that Justin G, far from being a shill, is actually a superhero in parentheses. Consider: He's very secretive. He reviews businesses without leaving behind a trace of his true identity. He doesn't respond to queries from the Tribune. And look at his profile: He wears a cape. A cape! Also, his reviews are annoyingly sincere. And as for his name, clearly Justin G is justing the world one review at a time. Yes, verbing weirds language, but if you can justly right the world, why not rightly just it too?)

http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=z25c9TyWY1TdVEGxkj34...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_(linguistics)#Humor

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#108

Post by archangel_one »

pigbucket wrote: post #107
Retric wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect Yelp is extremely venerable and could be successfully sued from several angles. However, the court system tends to protect such companies on free speech grounds etc. So, their downfall will probably come from leaked internal operations rather than any external source.

A beautiful typo. You mean "vulnerable" for "venerable" right? Is that because you think they really are doing what the article implies? Is there evidence more substantial than that offered by the Tribune? The article for me is just shoddy journalism. Can it be that hard to really test the hypothesis that businesses that turn down the ad salesperson get screwed by Yelp? I don't want to defend Yelp since I don't like…

I've heard talk of dodgy behaviour from Yelp before. See eg. this article: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/yelp-and-the-business-of-e... (via here: http://www.jwz.org/blog/2009/02/yelp-shakedown/)

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#109

Post by jeremymims »

akashs wrote: post #102
jeremymims wrote: post #84

It's easy to come down against Yelp, but small businesses have been trying to "game" Yelp in unsophisticated ways for some time. We work with a lot of small businesses and I've had conversations with a statistically significant number of them who have admitted trying to flood Yelp with reviews they've written themselves, writing reviews under fake named accounts, and providing over-glowing text for reviews to be subm…

TL;DR: You're wrong. And you sound like someone from Yelp trying to "game the system" and write positive reviews about yourself. Maybe PG's algorithms should censor you without any evidence? -------------- My parents had the exact same experience as in the article. - A few years ago, they didn't really know what yelp was, but a customer was surprised that the reviews up there were pretty bad, mostly just from custome…

Hi akashs,

I have no affiliation with Yelp. Click on my username anytime if you want to read who I work with and some background. It's right out in the open. However, I had to look at your posts to learn that your new startup is in the local review/recommendation space which is something you should actually disclose when bashing a competitor.

If what you're saying about Yelp's ad reps and software is truthful, then you should be spreading your father's story far and wide (call your local newspaper, they'd love the story), and you should feel comfortable recommending that your father cease to do business with them (why did he?).

Best of luck in your new venture.

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#110

Post by VladRussian »

jxcole wrote: post #28
noduerme wrote: post #13

Extortion. This is the racket of the 21st Century. Once you got the eyeballs, you call every business in your database and threaten to cut its legs out from under it unless it pays up. Google's running more or less the same racket. It's "soft"...there are no threats, exactly. But imagine if the Chicago Tribune called vendors and threatened to run a miserable review of them if they didn't pay? So why hasn't that happe…

Wrong, but with the right attitude. A while ago, SEOMoz reported a similar problem with ripoff report: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-anatomy-of-a-ripoff-report-la... Apparently, suing them for libel laws is impossible because of CDA, but suing them under RICO might work. CDA says that you can't sue someone for content posted by their users. RICO is an anti-mafia law that says if you are part of an organization that…

>CDA says that you can't sue someone for content posted by their users.

how about manipulating the content posted by their users - hiding some parts of it and prominently show other?

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